The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.

Nine-year-old Jallal is old enough to know that his life in Algeria is precarious at best. Having run away from home, he survives by selling peanuts and single cigarettes on the street. The proposal by the elderly Swiss woman named Anna is shocking and preposterous: go to the mountains with her, as a translator, so she can find her lost lover from decades ago and pray over the graves of their murdered children.

Nedjma is the symbol of Algeria. Nedjma is symbolic of the rich and sometimes bloody past of Algeria, of its passions, of its tenderness; it is the epic story of a human quest for freedom and happiness.

This tale opens when police brutally beat the young Berber narrator of Donkey Heart Monkey Mind for participating in a protest march. Knowing that he must leave his own country or suffer this kind of treatment forever, he begins wandering Europe and northern Africa, desperately seeking some alternative.

The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and initiates Lucius into her cult.

Younes is still an impressionable young boy when his family loses everything and is forced to move to the Algerian slum of Jenane Jato. His father is an overly proud man who refuses help from his wealthy brother, Mahi. But life in the city is difficult and he grudgingly agrees to let Younes live with Mahi to give him a chance at life.